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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

The first sign that you've been spending too much time in a particular store is when your 2-year-old can recognize the store from any angle.

IKEA opened up here this summer and we've become junkies. We love it. It's cheap, the stuff looks good, and it's reasonable well-made and long lasting. So I've been there several times, and since the easiest time to shop is when the older two are in school, Ellie gets to go with me. Somehow she thinks that when I'm saying IKEA, what I mean is MyKEA. So we drove by this morning, on the complete opposite side of the store from where you enter the parking lot, on our way to drop Chris off at the airport and she yelled, "Look Mommy, there's your KEA!"

We've carried on a tradition from Chris's family that each person gets a new ornament every year. When Vicki was three we were so poor that we couldn't afford to buy new ornaments (at least not the ones I thought were cute), so we made our own snowflakes out of popsicle sticks, white paint, and glitter. The next year we made snowmen out of pompoms and pipe cleaners. And so began a new tradition...now I have to come up with a cute and creative homemade ornament for us each year. This year we bought wooden shapes at the craft store and let everyone paint their own. It was a lot of fun, and luckily our table cleans up easily.

Vicki worked very painstakingly at her angel, trying to get it just right:Lexi's snowman started out yellow and went through several color transformations:

Ellie just loved to glop on as much paint as she possibly could, and kept saying, "I'm painting! Look Daddy! Me! Painting!"

Note the very femenine lips:

Lexi's turned out pretty psychedelic:For all the layers of paint she put on it, I'm impressed that Ellie's bear turned out anything but brown:Aaaaaand...the 2007 Ebert family Christmas ornaments:

Monday, November 26, 2007

We had our very first Thanksgiving with just our little family this year. The first year we were in Oregon we got together with a bunch of people from the ward, and last year all the Eberts came up and we spent Thanksgiving in a condo in Newport. This year no one came to visit (sniff) and we didn't know of anyone at church that needed someone to spend Thanksgiving with, so we decided to just make the most of it and go all out, even though it was just the five of us. We got out our wedding china, that we've only used once before, 7 1/2 years ago, and cooked all the necessary yummies. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, Great Grandma E.'s yams & apples, green bean casserole (which Vicki made all by herself), and rolls. Oh, and of course pumpkin pie. We still have sooooo much food leftover it's not even funny, but we had a great meal. Then we went bowling. It was a riot. The girls had a blast, and we didn't dent any holes in the bowling alley floor, although not for lack of trying.

Vicki tried really hard to bowl like you're supposed to, but the ball was still heavy and she's not that coordinated.

Lexi went for the granny bowl approach but just sort of flung the ball (you can see in the picture that it's actually in the air).

Ellie would push the ball down with the help of one of us, and then she'd lay on the floor waiting for the ball to make its slow way down the lane.

After bowling we rented Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which Chris and I hadn't seen in ages, and the girls absolutely loved it! Even Ellie keeps asking if we can watch "shrunk kids" again. We had a great holiday and we hope everyone else's was great too!

Friday, November 16, 2007

Chris went to Disneyland yesterday. Okay, so not actually Disneyland, but right across the street. He's doing Construction Administration on a project called Walnut Village, which is located pretty much in Disneyland's backyard. He goes down there overnight every other week. I had all these grand plans for my night alone. We always have a girls' movie night when Dad's gone - movies that Dad is happy to miss. So I was going to start the movie early, get the kids in bed as soon as it was over (I was optimistically shooting for 7pm here, but would've been happy with 7:30 or honestly even 8:00), clean up the kitchen, and then fold some laundry while I watched The Office. Then I was going to curl up with a bowl of ice cream and hot fudge sauce, watch whatever else was on TV or else just read a book without any interruptions, and then go to bed early myself.

I got half of all of those things done.

Except the movie. We did make it right to the end credits of Charlotte's Web before Ellie threw up spectacularly all over our new living room floor. How do single parents do it? You need one person to hold the sick child and keep them from contaminating the rest of the house and household and another person to clean it all up. There was just me, and Vicki and Lexi huddling in the farthest corner the could possibly get to, in record time, I might add. They helpfully told me, "Ellie has some in her hair!" and "I think it's in your shoe, Mom" as Ellie, confused about what on earth had just happened to her, tried to climb into my lap, stinky jammies and all. I stripped her and hauled her up to the bathtub, where she gleefully played for half an hour while I mopped up the floor and covered the house with a fine mist of Lysol. Then I had to rinse her off, drain the tub (you know why), fill it back up, and wash her. Throughout all this she was playing and singing - "Charlotte's Pig, la la, Charlotte's Pig" - and showed no signs whatsoever that she had just tossed her cookies. And meanwhile I had to convince Lexi and Vicki that yes, they really did need to go to bed, and no, I couldn't tuck them in or get their flouride pills or get them drinks of water, or, for that matter, touch them, really. I miss my other half.

Thankfully, the upside to this is that Ellie is totally fine today. She never threw up again, although she did wake up twice in the night to go potty. But it was a quarter to nine before I got her washed, dried off, and in bed, and then we had to make one more potty run (of course). So I watched half of The Office while I folded one load of laundry. Then I did the bare minimum in the kitchen and took a shower because I just felt contagious. I didn't get to bed until almost 11:00 and I didn't get my ice cream. I don't know how single parents do it. I do not ever want to find out. I have incredible respect for anyone raising children alone and remaining sane (at least as sane as I am, which isn't necessarily saying much, but still...) And I don't want Chris here just so I have someone else to clean up vomit. I missed having someone to hug me and tell me that it's going to be okay, and even if I end up being up all night long cleaning, bathing, and calming a sick child, the sun will come out tomorrow. I can tell myself that, but he does it so much better. It's the moral support, the companionship, and someone to laugh with about the older girls' reaction to Ellie's explosion.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Vicki turned 7 yesterday! She had a fantastic day. She is always so cheerful and enthusiastic about everything, and she was practically bouncing off the walls with excitement for her birthday. It so happened that we had a Brownie meeting yesterday after school, so she got to celebrate with her class, with the Brownies, and then again with our family after dinner. Not bad... :) And as if it couldn't get any better, we took the Brownies on a field trip to the roller skating rink, so she got to have a skating party AND she gets to have a party at home with her friends in a couple of weeks!

She loves projects and putting things together, so we got her a sew your own doll kit and a set of "Knifty Knitter" (cheesy name, I know) looms so she can create to her heart's content.

By the way, Carrie, if having a 2-year-old makes me old, what does it make me when my oldest child is 7?

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Yes, I know it's three days late, but here's a picture of the cuties in their costumes. Vicki was a fairy, Lexi was a "1950's girl" (what do you call someone in a poodle skirt, anyway?), and Ellie was a kitty. We had fun trick-or-treating our little neighborhood and, because there's not a lot of kids, the girls got tons of candy. Full-size candy bars at more than one house, and our next-door neighbors make up little bags with five or six of the small candy bars inside. The dentist will love us for sure!